Category: Social Media

Thoughts on socia media, which has addicted many and alienated others.

The Coaching Pandemic

I have often been targeted on Microsoft’s LinkedIn by ads for and posts by people purporting to be able to coach users on how to be “successful.”

There is seldom much elaboration, other than to say they’ll teach you how to get lots of connections and build your network. I guess there are people who value that. I’m not one of them, as I am active in the real world.

I now see more and more translators who have gone into the coaching business, selling their potential colleague translator clients the secrets of success. Some of them present themselves as “founders,” which appears to have lots of value to some people. This often self-applied title often just announces that the title holder is seeking to curate their persona without the need for any discernible substance. But I digress.

When things go bad for your personal business activities, some people turn to taking money from others for teaching them how to succeed.
There are a number of translators who long ago turned to coaching, an activity that can turn into a one-on-one cult religion, depending upon the gullibility of their clients. The number appears to be growing, and it’s now being bolstered by translators in the global south, sometimes regarding European target languages.

This is the world of Microsoft’s LinkedIn, where substance takes a back seat to fantasy.

Desperation drives a lot of LinkedIn posts from the global south.

My LinkedIn feed is inundated with posts from people with whom I share no business or language interests. They are mostly from the Global South and mostly AI-generated slop, and the low value of the posts is disturbing.

Why is it that the majority of LinkedIn post mentioning Japan that are fed to me by Microsoft are from accounts of people who are not in Japan, including many in the Global South, who are very unlikely to ever be able to come to Japan?

If you don’t know the answer to that question, you need to spend a bit of time thinking about LinkedIn and the demographics of desperate LinkedIn users.

Many LinkedIn users in the global south will never have the opportunity to visit locations such as Japan, but post in the hope that AI-generated or even human-generated Japan-related slop will attract engagement and perhaps income. That is highly unlikely, but such is the LinkedIn world of desperation.